Money Musings: 💠What I wish I knew… 📚
I’ve been getting some variation of this question in interviews lately -”What do you wish you knew when you started Financial Adulting?”
I love this question because passing on what I wish I had known - including the guide I wish I had (oh hey đź‘‹ Financial Adulting!) is why I do what I do.
My answer might surprise you.
What I wish I knew when I started Financial Adulting is that…
Almost no one knows what they are doing when it comes to their money.
Yep. It’s true. When I started working and earning a paycheck, I thought everyone else knew what they were doing. And I felt completely alone and shameful that I didn’t.
This not only feels bad, it sets us up for financial failure.
Because I thought everyone else knew what was going on and I was lost, instead of trying to figure things out for myself, I leaned on others who sounded confident.
Knowing what I know now, I know that those confident sounding people (who were predominantly men) actually didn’t know much more than me!
And if I had the confidence to try to figure it out myself, the decisions I would have made would have been very different.
So there you have it. That’s what I wish I knew.
What did you wish you knew when you started Financial Adulting? Hit reply and let me know.
P.S. Financial Adulting is not an age. Yes, many people start Financial Adulting when they get their first internship or job but many don’t have the financial privilege to wait until they are legal adults to deal with their money and others don’t start paying attention until much later.
MONEY MOVE OF THE WEEK
GIVE TAXES A REFRAME.
It’s that time of year again. A time that not many are fond of. Tax time!
While it can feel like a bummer to pay taxes, they deserve a reframe. In my conversation with Georgia Lee Hussey for Financial Adulting, she asked, “What would change if we shifted our language from tax burden to collective or community support? I like taxes. I would really like my future employees to go to good schools, I really like to have a park to walk through on my way to work and bridges that don’t fall down.”
She has a point! If you are looking for a rundown on how taxes work and how to pay them, head to Chapter 11 of Financial Adulting.
And this breakdown from theSkimm shows where our tax dollars go and why.
YOU GOTTA SEE THIS
THE PINK TAX - WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO AVOID IT.
If you’re a woman, you pay a pink tax. I spoke with Liz Grauerholz, a sociology professor who studies social inequalities (including the pink tax!) in an interview for Financial Adulting.
She describes the pink tax as “the practice of charging women more than men for identical services and products.” This discrepancy applies to clothes, toys, and healthcare products, among many other things.
The pink tax cost the average woman $2,294 in 2021. If we invested that amount annually in the market, that would be over $100,000 in 20 years.
I’m enraged. 🤬 Are you?
Liz shares some things we can do but stresses that “the burden shouldn’t rest on the individual consumer to force change. It’s important for communities and states to enact policies dictating fair pricing.”
Support companies with gender neutral pricing (they exist!)
Buy more gender neutral products
Avoid the dry cleaner’s as much as possible
Compare prices when shopping (this goes for razors and shampoo but also when buying a car or getting a mortgage)
Speak up. Talk to your state reps, local retailers and post about it on social media
Question unfair pricing when you see it